Beards, Booze and Blues: The Hitchhikers' Guide

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The Return of the Cosmic Hobo

It feels like it has been ages since I last wrote an update though it probably hasn’t been that long, I think it is more of a case that my Get-Up-And-Go has Gotten Up and Gone.

I haven’t really been up too much of late to be honest, I’ve been skimming through the Tubby Hayes biography and been reading a collection of Victorian Ghost Stories from the Penguin Classics range which includes Dickens’ The Signalman, M.R. James’ Oh Whistle and I’ll Come for You and W W Jacobs The Monkey’s Paw which if I am being honest doesn’t really strike me as a ‘ghost story’ more a tale of a cursed item (and in a technical sense it may well just be paranoia on behalf of the characters and it all be a coincidence) and since December is upon us I have started reading a few seasonal tomes, namely The Santa Klaus [sic] Murder and Crimson Snow: A Collection of Winter Stories. The former is an interesting country house murder mystery told by a selection of the guests at the house and looks quite promising so far and the second seems a nice light bathroom read.

Well this year Christmas is very different as not only do I have Christmas Day off for the first time in nearly 20 years, what is left of Clan Sandman is venturing out for Christmas Day lunch, now due to various holdbacks thanks to my sister’s antics Mum’s search for a venue has gone on the back burner so late in the day we did manage to make a Christmas day booking…. at the Kynnersley Arms. Well I guess it only makes sense I spend Christmas day in a pub so tradition isn’t too screwed up haha. We’ve placed the order for the meals and I believe my choices are Scallops to start, Turkey and Ham (don’t tell my Rabbi) for main and the Chocolate Bomb for pudding, I have still yet to ask the most important question for Xmas day though: what beer are you going to have on hand pull?

I started watching Q5 which was a sketch show by Goon Show co-creator Spike Milligan and is frequently hailed as an influence on Monty Python by both critics and John Cleese, while there is some truth to this I feel that from what I have seen so far Python to be far superior in both terms of writing and presentation. While there are amusing moments and a few laugh out loud sketches Q seems very hit and miss with more misses than hits and I think this is down to the much smaller creative team which literally is Spike Milligan and one other penning the material. The 100 Metres Standing Still sketch is a great Pythonesque idea and the silliness of Harry Secombe avoiding the entry fee to a Zoo by hiding in an elephant is wonderfully absurd but other material such as Hurl-a-Granny falls rather flat. A shame as I have always been a fan of the Goon Show and this has struck me as quite disappointing, still perhaps the second and third series will be improvements.

That’s all folks

P.S. Oh it’s 50 years since Patrick Troughton debuted as the second Doctor Who and to mark this the BBC have used the off-air sound track of his first story, The Power of the Daleks which is currently missing from the archives, and a brand new animation to match it to release the story once again. It is available on DVD but I am debating waiting for the Blu-Ray special edition in Feb which will contain a colour version of the animation as well, which will be an interesting novelty but I have a feeling I will stick with the black and white version for repeated viewings.